Pi & Pie
by hophophop
Summary: Pi: "Less talking, Sherlock, more tending. Former-doctor's orders." Set at the end of 1x24, sometime between the hospital and the roof. Pie: Now he looked affronted. "I did not buy the pie, Watson. I made it." Yet another episode-tag fic, following shortly after the end of 1x24.
1. Chapter 1: Pi

_"It's a mathematical constant."_

* * *

When she came down to make some herbal tea after two hours of sleeplessness, she was surprised to find him sitting in the leather chair and not sprawled on the couch.

"Hey. Can't sleep either?"

"Hmm." His head wobbled as he considered whether to continue. "Shoulder's giving me a bit of trouble," he said sheepishly, feeling as if he were admitting some great personal weakness. "The so-called pain killers they administered in the hospital lasted all of three hours and barely took the edge off, but the bed itself was more comfortable than I would have guessed. At least until the visitor arrived."

She looked over to the couch and tried to mentally fit him into it and saw the difficulty. She never understood how it would be comfortable for him under normal circumstances but with the injury, it was clearly not an option. She turned her head toward the stairs down to the kitchen and his room with the spare bed moved in— Ah. That would not be at all comfortable for him under these oh so very not normal circumstances either.

He watched her piece this together, and when she turned back to him he said, "So. Another sleepless night in this chair. One more won't kill me, Watson."

"No, although long-term sleep deprivation is hardly conducive to healing from gunshot trauma. But there's another solution. I'll take the couch and you move into my room until your shoulder has healed."

"Oh—"

She put out her hand to cut him off. "Less talking, Sherlock, more tending. Former-doctor's orders. Let me go put the kettle on and collect some clothes from your room, and then I'll get my room ready for you. If you could fix up the tea — anything without caffeine, I don't care what — it will be ready for you when that's done."

"Watson, this is hardly necessary. She didn't even spend a night in our house."

"It's very clearly necessary, and I'm sorry I didn't realize it immediately. You're not sleeping down there tonight, and you can't sleep up here yet, so there it is. All right?"

He wilted under her stare, dropping his head in silent acknowledgment. And exhaustion; other than that nap in the car while they waited for the Narwhal's cargo to unload she didn't think he'd slept more than a few hours since they captured Daniel Gotlieb. Once he succumbed, she suspected he'd be out for two days, like that other time. Please let there be no more times like these, she thought, knowing how futile that wish was.

He winced and bit back a groan as he started to push up with his good arm to get out of the chair, and she stepped over to press him down again, letting her hand rest heavy on his right shoulder.

"Never mind, I'll do the tea, you stay here until everything's all set. I should check your shoulder once more before you go to bed, but the floor lamp here is good enough to see by, since it's healing well. Or was, until you pulled the stitches."

The repaired stitches burned again with memory of what he'd shouted at her in the station. "Watson, I—"

"No. I know. You weren't disappointed in _me_. I knew who you were talking about. But if you still want to make it up to me, then drink the tea I'm going to give you and have two glasses of water for the blood loss and let me check the wound and go to bed without any more arguments. Then maybe I'll be able to get some rest around here, too." He could hear the smile in her voice at that last.

He nodded and released his breath, long and slow, letting his eyes close on a slow in-breath. She removed her hand and headed down to the kitchen.

He bent his right arm to touch the place on his shoulder where her hand had been. His eyes were still closed. An image came to mind, a circle bisected by its diameter, their relationship as reliable as it was impossible to describe completely. "Besides being a constant, Watson," he called out loud enough for her to hear downstairs, "pi is also irrational, transcendent, and very likely infinite."

A pause, and the click of the gas igniting under the kettle.

"I know, Sherlock," she called back.


	2. Chapter 2: Pie

_"You were visiting the grave of the man you let die on your operating table."_

* * *

"Oh my god, what is that smell?"

He looked askance. The times Watson asked that question rarely ended well.

"It's fantastic! Is there a pastry delivery service I didn't know about? Did Ms Hudson come over?"

He shifted from defensiveness on one account to another. "No, it's a pie. In the oven. Ms Hudson had nothing to do with it."

"When did you go shopping? there was no pie in the freezer this morning, and you haven't left the house all day."

Now he looked affronted. "I did not buy the pie, Watson. I made it."

Now she looked askance. Then suspicious. "Are you having me on?"

Now he looked offended. "It's not a particularly challenging task. Mix some things, roll out the dough, mix more things, layer, bake. You have never baked a pie, I take it."

She scoffed, incredulous. "Of course not. Coffee, tea, take out. The occasional sandwich. That's pretty much it. I have not been holding out on you, as you obviously have, on me. How do you know how to make pies? And how did you manage the rolling part? Isn't that normally a two-handed job?"

"A little light exercise is therapeutic for a healing injury. As for the composition of crust and filling, it's simple chemistry."

"I've watched Alton Brown too, don't try to claim that description as your own. Fine. Chemistry. Not experimental chemistry, right? No mutagenic compounds to rewrite my DNA?"

"Blueberry and peach. I raided your stash of frozen fruit, I admit. Those bags had the most freezer burn so I determined you had forgotten about them."

"That, and you threw away the blender."

"Ah. Well, I hope you'll find their incarnation in this form acceptable."

"Nothing that smells as good as that can be bad. When will it be done?"

*.*.*

The pie had a bee-shaped cut-out in the middle of the top crust, and the slits surrounding it to let out steam had swelled with baking and fruit juices but could possibly be deciphered to spell E.w. repeated all around. Not the most auspicious of initials, but nothing could dampen the delight she'd felt when he told her what he'd named the new bees that afternoon.

"Is this a happy bee-day pie, then?"

"If you like."

"Well, happy belated Pi Day, as well," she said, and then took her first bite. "Oh! This is really good. Please transform all my freezer-burned fruit at your earliest convenience." He responded by saluting his fork at her, mouth full. They continued eating in silence until the first slices were gone.

He pulled the pie plate over to cut out a second serving; she held out her plate for more before he could pick up the knife. "Pie Day?" he asked.

"Pi, your mathematical constant. It's observed on March 14: 3-14. You haven't heard of Pi Day?"

"I have not."

"Well, you celebrate pi, and Albert Einstein's birthday if you like, and eat pie at 1:59. Any excuse for pie, obviously, but it's a kind of promotion of mathematical fun. A former client told me about it."

"Was this client a mathematician?"

"No. She was... She was my first client, actually. She'd worked in the fashion industry, behind the scenes in different publications and advertising agencies. Production stuff. I don't know exactly. But she was also a geek, as she said, and a fan of science rather than a scientist."

"What is she doing now?"

She swallowed, although her pie was long finished at that point. She looked down and then suddenly turned away, putting her hands up to her face. "Oh god, sorry. I— Shit. Just—" She started to get up but he stopped her with his hand on her arm, looking as surprised to have done so as she did when she turned back, tears on her cheeks.

"What? What is it?" She almost had to laugh at the panicked look on his face, but it came out as more of a choked sob that she sucked back as quickly as possible, resulting in another undignified noise that did then slip over into laughter. His panic eased slightly but he didn't relax. He had no idea how to proceed when faced with Watson in tears.

She sniffled and wiped her eyes and nose with a paper towel he'd tossed to the table before serving the pie, warning "I fear this pie may not maintain structural integrity in the eating." His hand was still on her arm as she moved her hands over her face. She shifted to fold her arms across her torso, and his dropped away. She rested her face in one raised palm, elbows tucked tight and shoulders hunched over.

"I'm okay. Sorry to startle you like that." He shook his head at the apology but said nothing, lips tight and eyes intent on her. She couldn't maintain the eye contact and speak at the same time and looked down at her plate, streaked with purple from the pie. She cleared her throat.

"She died. Overdosed. It was long after my contract ended; I hadn't heard from her in over a year; staying in contact is up to the client, after a certain point. I found out months after the fact."

"You don't feel responsible." It was a statement intended as reassurance.

"No. Not really. There's always a bit of what-if, or should-I second-guessing with these things; I've had other clients relapse, though no one else has died. That I know about. But no; I'm just sorry. And I hadn't thought about her in such a long time now. The memory took me by surprise, I guess. Or maybe I'm just tired."

"Hmm." He had had some opportunity to observe the ways she internalized a sense of failure, and if he were to be honest, quite recently to compare his own response to perceived failure to hers. But this was not the time for sharing that analysis, as she continued.

"And. I suppose— It wasn't appropriate to explain at the time, but—" She looked up at him, assessing how he might respond, and whether she could face sharing it. She took a deep breath and sat up taller again. "That deduction you made about me at the start, about my patient at the cemetery? It was her grave I was visiting. Not his. I'd just learned about her before getting your contract. Her family had cut her off after the last relapse; they had to let go — I can't blame them. By the time they found out what had happened to her, she'd already been interred at Carver."

He looked aghast. "I— I don't know what to say, Watson. If I could take back the things I said to you that night—"

"It's all right. You did take them back. You were in a holding cell at the time unsure if you'd have a roof over your head ever again, but you did apologize, and sincerely, I thought. Yes?" The tears had receded, and she moved her shoulders and neck to unkink the strain of the moment. A two-hour massage was going to be required to unkink the strains of the last week. She'd make an appointment in the morning.

"I was certainly sincere about your promise as an investigator." He gave a rueful smile. "But yes, I'd gotten a glimpse of the potential we might have working together. Not that I'd somehow envisioned where we are now, to be sure. And I still abhorred anything to do with addiction counseling. But I was honestly sorry I'd attacked you with my deductions."

"Anyway. Now you know. You weren't right about everything, after all. People can still surprise you, too."

"Doubting that was never my weakness." She raised her eyebrows. "Not with regard to you, at least," he conceded. "Not after that first week."

She got up then and collected their plates to soak in the sink. "Thanks for the pie; it tasted even better than it smelled."

"I'm glad you liked it." He shoved the pie plate with a little more than half a pie left into a plastic bag and put it in the fridge. "Makes a good breakfast, too."

"Okay, I am tired. I'm going to sleep. As long as you're crashing in my bed, I expect you to use it for at least six hours every night."

"If you're not comfortable on the couch—"

"No, no, you're not getting out of it that easily. Sleep, Sherlock. That's what I want you to do. The more you sleep, the faster you'll heal, and the sooner you'll be free to run around with the police and stop driving me nuts because you don't have new cases to solve." She smiled to be sure he understood her meaning. "Okay?"

"Fine," he said, sounding glum but with a little gleam in his eye. She sighed, knowing he'd wait until she was asleep and then get up and do whatever he liked. Well. There was only so much she could do about that.

*.*.*

He slipped downstairs at 3am and paused in the library to check on her sleeping. The floor lamp was still on; she'd obviously fallen asleep reading a book she must be lying on top of now. The blanket had slipped half off to the floor, and he carefully repositioned it over her. She turned her head, eyes closed and darting under their lids, and mumbled from her dream, "baking a pie is irrational and transcendent."

There was a slight click as he turned off the lamp.

"I know, Watson," he whispered back.


End file.
